Stable genius

President Trump is doubling down on his decision to retweet an unfounded QAnon conspiracy theory that Osama bin Laden is still alive, a move that threatens to alienate members of the military with the election less than three weeks away.

Trump's amplification of conspiracy theories that bin Laden’s death was faked and that a body double was killed instead comes on the heels of reports that disparaged soldiers and his suggestion that he may have contracted the coronavirus from Gold Star families.

[...]

“It’s certainly not going to help him,” Gary Schmitt, a national security expert with the conservative American Enterprise Institute, said of the retweets.

“Most of the folks in the military are there voluntarily. They're career. They’re not just there for during the term of one president,” he added. “They have a good sense that they’ve dedicated themselves to a certain life, and the president seems to be suggesting that, outside anything else, they’ve been fooled."

"It can’t help but shake the military’s judgement about his judgment," Schmitt said.

[...]

Trump, who trails Biden both in national polls and in key battleground states, has stepped up his promotion on QAnon-linked Twitter accounts since spring. He has retweeted messages from such accounts at least 258 times, including at least 163 times since early March, according to Media Matters for America, a media watchdog.

  The Hill

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Obama v Trump: reporting the killing of an enemy

Funny and pathetic at the same time.

I hope everyone's still alive and able to laugh come 2021.

SNL doesn't need Alec Baldwin.  They can use the dipshit himself.

UPDATE:

"Something very big just happened!" - Part 4

And there it is:





My bad-guy capture moment is better than Obama's bad-guy capture moment.

Pathetic.



And a reminder...your president is a sick man...










And those endless wars he says we need to end?

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE:



That's gonna require a nasty comeback.

Bin Laden Seals Exposé

Officially known as the Naval Special Warfare Development Group, SEAL Team 6 is today the most celebrated of the U.S. military’s special mission units. But hidden behind the heroic narratives is a darker, more troubling story of “revenge ops,” unjustified killings, mutilations, and other atrocities — a pattern of criminal violence that emerged soon after the Afghan war began and was tolerated and covered up by the command’s leadership.
  The Intercept

Refuse to believe it if you're a patriotic American.  (Or, alternatively, praise it.)

This is a long article. I won't bother excerpting. Read it yourself if you're wondering just what evidence there is.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Uh...Okaaaay

Of course they took the DNA samples later. Of course. And then they threw the body in the sea where no one would ever find it. And Osama was never funded by the CIA. Why do you ask?

Wouldn't that be just another fine faux production of the US Army if it wasn't bin Laden they disposed of?  He could have been dead for years and just used as a bogeman.  Or, he could still be alive.  Or, they could have killed him in that raid.

Our Military Is Just Not What It Used to Be

The siren call of fame and fortune in the age of spectacle comes for us all.

A FORMER NAVY SEAL who shot Osama bin Laden and wrote a bestselling book about the raid is now the subject of a widening federal criminal investigation into whether he used his position as an elite commando for personal profit while on active duty, according to two people familiar with the case.

Matthew Bissonnette, the former SEAL and author of No Easy Day, a firsthand account of the 2011 bin Laden operation, had already been under investigation by both the Justice Department and the Navy for revealing classified information. The two people familiar with the probe said the current investigation, led by the Naval Criminal Investigative Service, expanded after Bissonnette agreed to hand over a hard drive containing an unauthorized photo of the al Qaeda leader’s corpse. The government has fought to keep pictures of bin Laden’s body from being made public for what it claims are national security reasons.

[...]

[Bissonnette's lawyer] said that he had negotiated a deal in 2014 with the Pentagon and the Justice Department to hand over to the government some of the millions of dollars in book profits Bissonnette had received.

He would not confirm Bissonnette’s possession of the bin Laden photo or whether any investigation still remains open.

[...]

Federal investigators [...] became interested in whether Bissonnette’s business ventures with companies that supply military equipment — including companies whose products were used by SEAL Team 6 — were helped by his role in the elite unit’s procurement process, according to one of the people familiar with the case.

[...]

Bissonnette was seen as a rising star within the SEAL Team 6 command. According to several former SEAL Team 6 operators, he was once described by his commanding officer as the model for naval commandos: smart, discriminating, and lethal.

  The Intercept

And self-serving. I guess they didn't notice that.

SEALs sign nondisclosure agreements about their work, and even beyond the legal ramifications of violating those agreements, former SEAL Team 6 members who speak publicly about their battlefield exploits are often ostracized by their peers.

[...]

According to two retired SEAL Team 6 operators, Bissonnette’s name has been added to a rock kept at the Virginia Beach SEAL Team 6 base. The rock is used to mark former members who are no longer welcome at the command, including former SEALS who have violated a series of unwritten codes of conduct among the unit.

That'll teach him, eh?

Bissonnette [...] acknowledged in interviews that he violated military rules that required him to allow the Defense Department to review his manuscript prior to publication. He has since sued an attorney he consulted, claiming the lawyer advised him the manuscript did not have to be reviewed by the Pentagon. The lawyer, Kevin Podlaski, did not respond to a message requesting comment.

He'll get his kickback from Bissonnette later.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Spies

[May 10, 2007] Humanitarian International Services Group, or HISG, won special praise from [President GW Bush] for having demonstrated how a private charity could step in quickly in response to a crisis. “In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina,” read Hiramine’s citation, “HISG’s team launched a private sector operation center in Houston that mobilized over 1,500 volunteers into the disaster zone within one month after the hurricane.”

But as the evangelical Christian Hiramine crossed the stage to shake hands with President Bush and receive his award, he was hiding a key fact from those in attendance: He was a Pentagon spy whose NGO was funded through a highly classified Defense Department program.

[...]

The secret Pentagon program, which dates back to December 2004, continued well into the Obama presidency. It was the brainchild of a senior Defense Department intelligence official of the Bush administration, Lt. Gen. William “Jerry” Boykin.

  The Intercept

You remember Jerry Boykin.

[October 16, 2003 -- Lt. Gen. William G. "Jerry" Boykin,]13-year veteran of the Army's top-secret Delta Force is also an outspoken evangelical Christian who appeared in dress uniform and polished jump boots before a religious group in Oregon in June to declare that radical Islamists hated the United States "because we're a Christian nation, because our foundation and our roots are Judeo-Christian ... and the enemy is a guy named Satan."

Discussing the battle against a Muslim warlord in Somalia, Boykin told another audience, "I knew my God was bigger than his. I knew that my God was a real God and his was an idol."

  LA Times

Back to The Intercept article:

Hiramine’s NGO, by offering humanitarian aid to the country’s desperate population, was able to go where others could not.

[...]

Few, if any, of the rest of the organization’s staff and volunteers had any knowledge about its role as a Pentagon front, according to former HISG employees and former military officials.

[...]

Before it was finally dismantled in 2013, Hiramine’s organization received millions in funding from the Pentagon through a complex web of organizations designed to mask the origin of the cash.

[...]

The use of HISG for espionage was “beyond the pale” of what the U.S. government should be allowed to do, said Sam Worthington, president of InterAction, an association of nearly 200 American NGOs. The practice of using humanitarian workers as spies “violates international principles” and puts legitimate aid and development workers at risk, he argued.

Not only that, but it can undermine and create a backlash that harms legitimate aid benefits to the people they are supposed to be helping.

Just before reading this article, I had been listening to an NPR segment about how polio has been virtually eradicated from the planet. The remaining area where it still exists, they told me, is the "restive" border of Afghanistan and Pakistan. They informed me that the evil Taliban had been preventing vaccination efforts and even killed medical personnel who were there to carry out the program. The NPR reporters did not, however, inform me why the Taliban in that region did so. Why did they leave that part out?

July 9, 2012   In Pakistan, where polio has never been eliminated, the C.I.A.’s decision to send a vaccination team into the Bin Laden compound to gather information and DNA samples clearly hurt the national polio drive. The question is: How badly?

After the ruse by Dr. Shakil Afridi was revealed by a British newspaper a year ago, angry villagers, especially in the lawless tribal areas on the Afghan border, chased off legitimate vaccinators, accusing them of being spies.

And then, late last month, Taliban commanders in two districts banned polio vaccination teams, saying they could not operate until the United States ended its drone strikes. One cited Dr. Afridi, who is serving a 33-year sentence imposed by a tribal court, as an example of how the C.I.A. could use the campaign to cover espionage.

  NYT

Back to The Intercept:

The Taliban claimed the vaccination program was part of a Western intelligence plot. Cases of polio, which has been eradicated in almost every country in the world, have spiked in Pakistan in recent years.

ASIDE FROM HIRAMINE and possibly other top executives, those who worked for HISG were never aware they were involved in a Pentagon intelligence program, or that Hiramine was working for the U.S. government, according to two former military officials.

“They were never witting,” said the former senior Pentagon official. “That was the point.”

  The Inercept

Government dupes. Hated for their freedoms, no doubt.

In 2012, now-retired Adm. William McRaven, the commander of the Special Operations Command in Tampa, Florida, who oversaw the Osama bin Laden raid, shut down the North Korea spying program.

“McRaven told us he shut it down because he was nervous about the flap if it ever got out that the Pentagon had used a bunch of evangelicals and missionaries as spies,” said one former military officer, adding that if the program had produced better intelligence McRaven would have considered keeping it up and running. McRaven did not respond to a request for comment.

[...]

“If these people had been caught and tried and executed in downtown Pyongyang you’d really understand the risk,” said Robert Baer, a retired CIA officer who spent more than 20 years conducting espionage operations.

And they'd have been really surprised themselves. And honestly claiming not to be spies. See how that works?

“The reward is almost zero given the risk because using NGOs — especially unwitting [ones] — produces very weak intelligence,” said [...] Baer.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

It Was Only a Movie

Update: The Frontline program

In the days leading up to the nationwide release of Zero Dark Thirty, the 2012 blockbuster movie about the U.S. raid that killed Osama bin Laden, Sen. Dianne Feinstein was given an advanced screening. How did the then-chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, whose investigators were working on their own story about the hunt for bin Laden and the role that torture may have played, react to Hollywood’s depiction?

“I walked out of Zero Dark Thirty, candidly,” Feinstein says. “We were having a showing and I got into it about 15, 20 minutes and left. I couldn’t handle it. Because it’s so false.”

False, in Feinstein’s estimation, because she says the film inaccurately portrays torture as a key tool in obtaining information about bin Laden’s whereabouts. Feinstein recounts her revulsion in a new documentary from Frontline, airing Tuesday night on PBS, about the CIA’s torture program and whether brutal interrogations of detainees helped surface intelligence that led to bin Laden’s compound in Pakistan, where U.S. special operations forces killed him in 2011.

  Daily Beast

I am no Feinstein fan, by a long shot. But good on her for this.  Even if she is just cashing in on the turning tide.

And of course, there's this:

Investigative journalist Michael Isikoff told Frontline that many more people will see Zero Dark Thirty than will read the countless newspaper articles about the CIA’s interrogation techniques. The movie, he thinks, will stand as the dominant narrative for what really happened in the search for bin Laden.

(Contentious) Sy Hersh Interview

In case anyone reading is too young to know, Sy Hersh is the journalist who broke the My Lai massacre story during the Vietnam war.  He also had sources who told him about the criminality and torture at Abu Ghraib, but his claims were roundly dismissed. The U.S. Government and its media shills do not like Mr. Hersh.

[Seymour] Hersh’s piece claims that Bin Laden was being held prisoner by the Pakistani military and intelligence service (the ISI), who were using him as a means to control Taliban and al-Qaida elements, and hoping to use him as leverage in their relationship with the United States. According to Hersh, who relied largely on an anonymous intelligence source, the Obama administration found out that Pakistan had Bin Laden, and eventually convinced Pakistani military leaders to allow a raid on the compound where Bin Laden was being held. The plan, Hersh writes, was to say publicly that Bin Laden was killed not in the raid but in a drone strike. The White House, however, supposedly broke this deal because of the political value of making the details of the raid public.

Hersh’s story has been much debated over the past several days, with many calling it into question and (a comparable few) others applauding its willingness to undercut the official narrative. NBC News and the AFP have both backed up small elements of Hersh’s story, although both outlets have also called other elements of his piece into question (and NBC later backed away from its original reporting). And no news source has supported Hersh’s largest claim—that the president lied about the raid.

I spoke to Hersh by phone this week. Here is a transcript of our conversation….

   Isaac Chotiner: Slate

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/foreigners/2015/05/seymour_hersh_interview_on_his_bin_laden_story_the_new_yorker_journalism.single.html

"I just said what I said. I don’t want to hear what the upshot is. If you have another question then ask it. This is going on too long. I am too old and too cranky and too tired. I have been doing this fucking thing for a day. I told you, I warned you, that I am really irritable."

Dick Cheney Is Not Happy

In the immediate aftermath of Seymour Hersh’s winding narrative on the killing of Osama bin Laden and an alleged cover-up by the U.S. government, officials, spies and even other journalists have been quick to label the story a sham.

But now, multiple news sources are backing up at least one aspect of Hersh’s controversial account on the 2011 raid: It was a Pakistani tipster who ultimately led U.S. special forces to the fugitive’s Abbottabad compound, not the courier Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti, whose identity was supposedly revealed by CIA detainees.

Which, if true, would mean the key to bin Laden’s location was not, as the agency tells it, torture.

  Huffington Post

Sy Hersh Reporting on bin Laden Kill

Sy Hersh Story on bin Laden Kill Is "Old News" from Different Sources

R.J. Hillhouse, a former professor, Fulbright fellow and novelist whose writing on intelligence and military outsourcing has appeared in the Washington Post and New York Times, made the same main assertions in 2011 about the death of Osama bin Laden as Seymour Hersh’s new story in the London Review of Books — apparently based on different sources than those used by Hersh.

Bin Laden was killed by Navy SEALs on May 2, 2011. Three months later, on August 7, Hillhouse posted a story on her blog “The Spy Who Billed Me” stating that (1) the U.S. did not learn about bin Laden’s location from tracking an al Qaeda courier, but from a member of the Pakistani intelligence service who wanted to collect the $25 million reward the U.S. had offered for bin Laden; (2) Saudi Arabia was paying Pakistan to keep bin Laden under the equivalent of house arrest; (3) Pakistan was pressured by the U.S. to stand down its military to allow the U.S. raid to proceed unhindered; and (4) the U.S. had planned to claim that bin Laden had been killed in a drone strike in the border regions of Afghanistan and Pakistan, but was forced to abandon this when one of the Navy SEAL helicopters crashed.

[...]

Hillhouse wrote another post on August 11, 2011 with more detail, and her story was picked up by numerous papers outside the U.S., such as the New Zealand Herald.

At that point, according to Hillhouse, “my understanding was there was great concern with the security guys … Everything that I’ve written on national intelligence, [that] was the first time I ever had a [former] senior member of the intelligence community signal me to basically go black … I’ve never been waved off like I was signaled to [then].” Because of this, Hillhouse says, she destroyed her notes from her conversations with her sources.

  The Intercept

And, why were we not shown evidence of the body they supposedly threw into the sea?

Hillhouse also claims that one of her sources told her a particular detail that she did not include in 2011 because she could not confirm it: that the Navy SEALs threw bin Laden’s body out of the helicopter while traveling over the Hindu Kush mountains from Pakistan to Afghanistan. Hersh’s story includes an assertion from his main source that “during the helicopter flight back to Jalalabad, some body parts were tossed out over the Hindu Kush mountains.” While this seems bizarre in retrospect, it would be plausible if the SEALs had believed at the time that the Obama administration planned to say publicly that bin Laden had been killed in a drone strike.

Sounds more than plausible to me.

The Real Story of Osama bin Laden Kill

 And you want me to believe that if the Pakistani government knew it, the US government did not?

OK, let me modify that...the CIA did not?

 Sy Hersh, once again, comes up with the story.

 Read it; it's quite interesting.

 According to his source, Pakistan had captured bin Laden, and the Sauds paid them to keep him alive and away from the Americans. He also says that the US was cutting back aid to Pakistan, and in return for several millions of dollars, the Pakistanis allowed the US to go in and take bin Laden out. Not in the way the movie line went, or the SEAL story, however, as he was reportedly ailing badly. ‘The truth is that bin Laden was an invalid, but we cannot say that,’ the retired official said. ‘“You mean you guys shot a cripple? Who was about to grab his AK-47?”’

There's still plenty of fishy angles, but the media excitement is the fact that Washington has been lying. Really? It would be more exciting to find out Washington wasn't lying.

 ...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

More Bin Laden Papers

In the spring of 2010, Afghan officials struck a deal to free an Afghan diplomat held hostage by Al Qaeda. But the price was steep — $5 million — and senior security officials were scrambling to come up with the money.

They first turned to a secret fund that the Central Intelligence Agency bankrolled with monthly cash deliveries to the presidential palace in Kabul, according to several Afghan officials involved in the episode. The Afghan government, they said, had already squirreled away about $1 million from that fund. Within weeks, that money and $4 million more provided from other countries was handed over to Al Qaeda, replenishing its coffers after a relentless C.I.A. campaign of drone strikes in Pakistan had decimated the militant network’s upper ranks.

“God blessed us with a good amount of money this month,” Atiyah Abd al-Rahman, the group’s general manager, wrote in a letter to Osama bin Laden in June 2010.

  NYT

God. Is that what we’re calling the CIA now?

We pay them. We blow them up. We pay them. Good for the weapons manufacturers at least.

Bin Laden urged caution, fearing the Americans knew about the payment and had laced the cash with radiation or poison, or were tracking it. “There is a possibility — not a very strong one — that the Americans are aware of the money delivery,” he wrote back, “and that they accepted the arrangement of the payment on the basis that the money will be moving under air surveillance.”

Too bad we’re not that smart.

The C.I.A.’s contribution to Qaeda’s bottom line, though, was no well-laid trap. It was just another in a long list of examples of how the United States, largely because of poor oversight and loose financial controls, has sometimes inadvertently financed the very militants it is fighting.

Cal l me a conspiracy theorist if you must, but it happens more often than “sometimes” would lead us to believe. And more than once is often enough to warrant some critical consideration.

 ...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Bin Laden Files

Palm oil cultivation in West Africa, climate change, and how to kill Americans more effectively than cigarettes. These were the issues on Osama bin Laden’s mind in his final years as he struggled to direct the terrorist group’s activities from his hideout in Pakistan, according to newly released files retrieved from the compound where he was killed.

Direct communications between the al Qaeda leader and his inner circle were entered as evidence in a terrorism trial recently concluded in Brooklyn, New York, effectively doubling the amount of publicly available documents recovered from bin Laden’s final hideout. Together the newly disclosed documents paint a picture of a man who, despite being holed up for years in his high-walled compound in the garrison town of Abbottabad, Pakistan, maintained a hands-on role managing al Qaeda in the face of a crippling “espionage war” and mounting bureaucratic obstacles.

[...]

DOWNRANGE, an online forum managed by Kronos Advisory, a firm specializing in terrorism investigations, obtained and published the full set of files.

[...]

In a handwritten letter scrawled on crumpled notebook paper, bin Laden’s chief of external operations admitted losing contact with operatives sent to carry out attacks in Britain, Russia and Europe. He cited shortcomings in the commitment of his personnel, communications challenges, lack of necessary travel documents and a failure to execute operations as key problems.

[...]

Bin Laden’s general manager, meanwhile, offered a detailed account of al Qaeda’s challenges in Pakistan, chief among them: the CIA’s drone war.

[...]

The official described how al Qaeda was “constantly uncovering and destroying spies’ networks […] But that has not kept airstrikes from hitting us repeatedly because we continue to make mistakes, and for other reasons.”

The group was working hard to find ways to jam or hack the drones, but “no results so far,” he wrote. “However, they are continuing.”

[...]

In communications back to his subordinates, bin Laden was given to long-winded and detailed replies. Describing his vision for operations in Somalia, he advised sending “a delegation of trusted Somali tribal leaders” to meet with businessmen in the Persian Gulf and “brief them about the living conditions of Muslims in Somalia and how their children are dying of extreme poverty, to remind them of their responsibilities towards their Muslim brothers.”

He also devoted an entire paragraph to the potential value of Palm Oil trees in the region; “It should be known that the income generated by one acre of palm oil trees was seven hundred and fifty dollars a few years ago, and it is supposed to have gone up now.”

The terrorist leader was particularly concerned with climate change, noting in one communication, “Attached is a report about climate change, especially the floods in Pakistan. Please send it to AI-Jazeera.”

The newly disclosed documents reflect bin Laden’s acute attention to operational security, revealing the al Qaeda leader was aware of his adversaries’ electronic surveillance capabilities years before Edward Snowden’s NSA revelations. “[J]ust because something can be encrypted doesn’t make it suitable for use,” bin Laden wrote. “As you know, this science is not ours and is not our invention. That means we do not know much about it. Based on this, I see that sending any dangerous matter via encrypted email is a risky thing.”

  The Intercept

Smarter than most US Congressmen.

Whatever Happened to the SEAL Code of Silence?

Two former US Navy SEALs that took part in the raid at Osama bin Laden’s compound three years ago have told opposing versions of who ultimately killed the Al-Qaeda founder. The dispute over events is now materializing as both seek the spotlight.

  RT

I wondered if that would happen.

In [self-aggrandizing, glory hound Rob] O’Neill’s version of events, as told to Esquire in 2013, the “point man” in the Abbottabad, Pakistan raid tackled two women as “the shooter” [himself] advanced, killing Bin Laden in another room.

[...]

In ‘No Easy Day’, Mark Bissonnette, writing under the pseudonym ‘Mark Owen’, said the first person to enter bin Laden's room, the “point man,” was the SEAL to kill Bin Laden.

[...]

Bissonnette is scheduled to release next week a second book, titled ‘No Hero’, about his time as a SEAL.

So I wonder if that means he’s claiming the kill himself, or if “the shooter” was a third person. Most likely the former.

Bissonnette’s first book has already drawn ire from the Pentagon. He refused to offer the federal government a draft of ‘No Easy Day’ for legal review, and he is now under investigation for potentially disclosing classified information from the raid. He has said he was frustrated by who could and could not speak of the mission in the ensuing months.

“Everybody and their brother was talking about this,” Bissonnette said, according to NBC News. “How can you be holding it against me?”

Has he not been paying attention?

After an illustrious military career that included dozens of decorations, O’Neill, 38, has since left the Navy and works as a motivational speaker based on his 16 years in the service. He reportedly decided to come forward in public after frustration over the loss of veterans’ benefits, as he did not serve a full 20-year term as is the standard for certain allowances from the service.

Was he unaware of the rules?

 ...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

That's himself.  Whatever happened to the SEAL Code of Selflessness?

Storm Troopers:  The Empire Strikes Again

Isn't This the Sort of Thing That Knocked the Legs Out from Under the Mob?

New generations who sought glory and notoriety? Who broke the codes and rules of the old dons? 

Former Navy Seal Robert O’Neill, the man who actually shot Bin Laden, has left the Seals and is cashing in on his former role by going on speaking engagements. Well-paid ones, no doubt. The Seals organization is not happy.

“We do not abide wilful or selfish disregard for our core values in return for public notoriety and financial gain, which only diminishes otherwise honorable service, courage and sacrifice.”

“All members exposed to classified information have a duty obligation to protect this information, regardless of what may be reflected in the media, accurately or otherwise,” they added.

“We will actively seek judicial consequence for members who willfully violate the law, and place our Teammates, our Families, and potential future operations at risk.”

As for risks of coming forward that do not include the Pentagon’s wrath, [O'Neill's father Tom] said he and his son are not worried about retribution.

“People are asking if we are worried that ISIS (militant jihadist group Islamic State) will come and get us because Rob is going public,” he told the Daily Mail.

“I say I'll paint a big target on my front door and say come and get us.”

  RT

His father also asked what people expected his hero son to do now, work as a Walmart greeter?  God forbid.  That's for the lesser soldiers who lost limbs doing something much less glamorous.

I think it’s safe to say, “Like father, like son.”

Of course, the younger O'Neill is just following in the footsteps of the glory-seeking administration that leaked information about the operation for a Hollywood movie.

...and hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE:  November 8

They Can't Get What We Don't Have

[An] email was sent by Admiral William McRaven, head of US Special Operations Command, to subordinate officers on May 13, 2011, instructing them that any remaining photos of Bin Laden’s body must be destroyed or handed over to the CIA. Bin Laden was killed on May 2, 2011 at his compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, by the special operations team commonly known as Seal Team Six during Operation Neptune Spear.

In the email, addressed to “Gentlemen,” McRaven wrote, “One particular item that I want to emphasize is photos; particularly UBLs [Usama Bin Laden, as US military referred to him] remains. At this point – all photos should have been turned over to the CIA; if you still have them destroy them immediately or get them to the [redacted].”

The order to purge the photos came 11 days after the conservative government transparency organization Judicial Watch filed a FOIA request with the Defense Department seeking “all photographs and/or video recordings of Usama Bin Laden taken during and/or after the U.S. military operation in Pakistan on or about May 1, 2011.”

  RT

Wouldn’t want them to fall into enemy (i.e. American public) hands.

Propaganda Journalism and Fearmongering As NSA Triage

Two years ago, following the raid that killed Osama bin Laden in Pakistan, a number of journalists wrote dramatic accounts of the Al Qaeda leader’s last moments. One such story, co-authored by Eli Lake in the Washington Times, cited Obama administration officials and an unnamed military source, described how bin Laden had “reached for a weapon to try to defend himself” during the intense firefight at his compound, and then “was shot by Navy SEALs after trying to use a woman reputed to be his wife as a human shield.”

[...]

Many reporters uncritically rushed the government’s account into print. For Lake, though, it fit a career pattern of credulously planting dubious stories from sources with strong political agendas.

Which brings us to the news story that Lake and Josh Rogin broke for the Daily Beast last week, in which they reported that the “crucial intercept that prompted the U.S. government to close embassies in 22 countries was a conference call between al Qaeda’s senior leaders and representatives of several of the group’s affiliates throughout the region.” The story said that among the “more than 20 operatives” on the call was Ayman al-Zawahiri, who the piece claimed was managing a global organization.

[...]

Then a number of respected national-security journalists began to question the motives of the leakers, and to cast doubt on the story generally. Ken Dilanian of the Los Angeles Times suggested that the piece was intended to glorify the NSA’s signals-intelligence capabilities. Barton Gellman of the Washington Post said there was something “very wrong” with the whole thing. New York magazine got in on the act by parodying the notion of an Al Qaeda conference call.

[...]

In a follow-up story published the day after the original article, Lake wrote that at the request of its sources, the Daily Beast was “withholding details about the technology al Qaeda used to conduct the conference call.” The suggestion was that the story had omitted information to keep terrorists from knowing too much about U.S. intelligence operations. But as Dan Murphy of the Christian Science Monitor noted, “If a conference call of some sort took place, then the participants know full well how they did it. [...] “ Others wondered why, given the worldwide uproar about National Security Agency spying, Al Qaeda would risk gathering all of its top operatives for any form of simultaneous multiparty communication.

[...]

Thus far no major media outlet has confirmed Lake and Rogin’s story. U.S. officials told Bloomberg News that reports of a conference call were incorrect.

[...]

But just as in the case of the raid that killed bin Laden, the bogus story was better than the truth. A less sensational story would not have provided fodder for John McCain’s preposterous remarks on the renewed strength of Al Qaeda (or for the broader political exploitation of the story by the right), nor would it have provided political cover for the NSA.

  Harpers

Loose Lips Can Sink Ships

Congress has launched an investigation of the helicopter crash [on Aug. 6, 2011] that killed 30 Americans in Afghanistan, including members of the Navy’s elite SEAL Team 6 unit.

[...]

Charlie Strange, whose son Michael was among those killed, said he asked President Obama two years ago at Dover Air Force Base to fully investigate. The death toll in the crash was the largest of any single incident for the U.S. military during the Afghanistan war.

Obama praised Michael’s service to Strange, who responded, “I don’t need to know about my son. I need to know what happened to my son.”

The president promised he would investigate, Strange said, but he never heard back from the White House. The Pentagon, meanwhile, has provided him and others with incomplete and contradictory information, he said.

  The Hill

Now why do you suppose they would be resisting ?

Administration leaks that emerged after the bin Laden raid prompted members of Team 6 to worry about their safety.

But Bradley Manning and Edward Snowden are traitors whose leaks put Americans’ lives at risk.

I remember my son, who served a tour in Iraq, being incredulous that the government was “outing” the SEALS. NObody is supposed to know who or where the SEALS are, he said.

Shortly before the CH-47 Chinook helicopter took off on a rescue mission (operation Extortion 17), seven Afghan commandos who were on the passenger list were replaced by other Afghan military officials.

It remains unclear why the manifest was incorrect, raising red flags among the victims’ families. They have noted that their sons didn’t trust Afghan soldiers. One was quoted as saying, “They are loyal to the highest bidder.”

In the transcript related to the Pentagon’s probe, a Defense official confirmed that all seven names of the Afghan soldiers were incorrect.

The official said, “I cannot talk to the back story of why…” before being interrupted by another Department of Defense employee.

The Chinook was shot down by Afghan militants, and all 38 on board perished. Among the dead were 30 Americans, including 22 Navy SEALS, seven Afghan soldiers and one Afghan translator. Their bodies were later recovered, but the helicopter’s black box was not. Pentagon officials have said that it could not be recovered, citing a flash flood that happened soon after the assault.

All the bodies were cremated. The Pentagon has defended the cremation to the soldiers’ families, saying the bodies were badly burned.

So? There’s no law against burying badly burned bodies that I’m aware of.

Chaffetz, however, said he has seen a photo of a deceased SEAL that was not. “The body I saw didn’t need to be cremated,” Chaffetz said, adding that the Department of Defense’s explanation of its failure to find the helicopter’s black box seems “awfully odd.”

Odd.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.